Re: Evaluating Tier 1 Internet providers

[Michael Smith <mksmith () mac com>]

On Aug 28, 2013, at 1:18 AM, Eric A Louie <elouie () yahoo com> wrote:

> how is that really much different than "reachability"?  If I look at my present Netflow results, it's actually a 
> pretty amusing mix - lots of Netflix traffic (bear in mind we're a business ISP, not residential), Google (probably 
> YouTube in there, I haven't dissected it thoroughly), Amazon, Yahoo, Microsoft/MSN, and that's all covered in the 
> peering fabric connection.  Outside of that, some private VPN-type traffic, I don't see a lot of government networks, 
> just "normal" Internet browsing and email.

It's really "can reach" versus "how well can they reach."  I can't any provider that would have less than a full view 
of the DFZ but, if your primary traffic is to Provider X, and one of your Tier 1's peers locally and the other peers in 
France, then you would look more closely at the closer one.  Unless, of course, that local peer was saturated 99% of 
the time.  Then France might be attractive.

In short, it's good to do a lot of due diligence in finding out exactly how your providers of choice are connected to 
your destinations of choice.

Mike

> Since I'm not at the Data Center much, I don't interact with the other customers there.  (It's 150 miles away)  Due 
> to non-disclosure, the Data Center gang aren't much going to share their customer contact info with me.  But it's a 
> nice thought, for sure.
>
> -e-
>
>
> From: Michael Smith <mksmith () mac com>
> To: Eric Louie <elouie () yahoo com> 
> Cc: nanog () nanog org 
> Sent: Tuesday, August 27, 2013 6:48 PM
> Subject: Re: Evaluating Tier 1 Internet providers
>
> You should also consider who exactly your customers (or you alone) want to reach.  Are you mostly looking to connect 
> to eyeball networks?  Enterprise networks?  Government networks?  If you have some target networks you should do some 
> due diligence to find out how well connected your various options are to the networks that mean the most to you.
>
> If possible, I would also recommend talking to other people that are in your data centers, if that's possible.  You 
> might find out about hidden vendor-specific gremlins in that location.
>
> Regards,
>
> Mike
>
>
> On Aug 27, 2013, at 12:02 PM, Eric Louie <elouie () yahoo com> wrote:
>
> > Based on various conversation threads on Nanog I've come up with a few
> > criteria for evaluating Tier 1 providers.  I'm open to add other criteria -
> > what would you add to this list?  And how would I get a quantitative or
> > qualitative measure of it?
> >
> >
> >
> > routing stability
> >
> > BGP community offerings
> >
> > congestion issues
> >
> > BGP Peering relationships
> >
> > path diversity
> >
> > IPv6 table size
> >
> >
> >
> > Seems like everyone offers 5 9's service, 45 ms coast-to-coast, 24x7
> > customer support, 100/1Gbps/10Gbps with various DIR/CIR and burst rates.
> > I'm shopping for new service and want to do better than choosing on
> > reputation.  (or, is reputation also a criteria?)
> >
> >
> >
> > much appreciated,
> >
> > Eric Louie